Die Trying
by AstroGirl
Summary: Being more doesn't end with death. Features Crais and Zhaan. Spoilers through 'Into the Lion's Den.'


**Die Trying**  
**by AstroGirl**

He had expected oblivion after death, had hoped for peace. This was neither. This was simply... not living. Though he wondered if it still wasn't preferable to the alternative.

When he became aware that he was not alone, he could not have said whether the Delvian had only just appeared, or whether she had been with him all along and he had only just noticed. Either way, her presence took him by surprise.

"Pa'u Zhaan?" For a microt, he wasn't sure he had recognized her correctly. She seemed... different. "Why are you here?"

She smiled at him. Her expression seemed gently amused, and he could detect no mockery behind it. "Because I am dead."

"Yes, I see. Allow me to rephrase that. Why are you here with _me_?" He put up a hand. "And do not say, because I am also dead. I am well aware of the fact."

She moved closer to him. Or perhaps she only seemed to; it was difficult to tell in this place. Perception was strange, and dimension as he had been familiar with it no longer quite existed. "In a way, I believe that _is_ the reason." She tilted her head a little, considering him. "Are you willing to listen to a small lecture about the nature of life after death?"

"Why not? I appear to have little else to do."

"True enough. Well, then." She smiled again. "We mortal beings, if we expect anything, expect that death will change us. That when we are translated to a higher plane, our spirits will be purged of all their darknesses, great and small, and only the best and purest essence of our souls will continue. But, of course, nothing is ever that simple. Even in death, true change comes only from within, and from the interaction of soul with soul. And so it is necessary to speak with those about whom our own souls are troubled." There was a flash of something sad and distant in her eyes, and Crais wondered briefly who and what she had already had to face here. He had never thought to ask about her crime. It seemed irrelevant now.

"With all respect, priestess, I fail to see why _you_ should be the first on that doubtless very extensive list."

Her shoulders raised in a tiny, expressive shrug. "The Goddess's ways are sometimes mysterious. Perhaps you needed to speak with me first. Or perhaps it is I who needed to speak with you." For a long moment, she was silent. "I always regretted," she said at last, "that we never had a chance to talk. We were so seldom in the same place, and when we were, we always seemed to be in the middle of a crisis."

He gave her a look of surprise. "Talk? About what?"

"Oh, many things. Hopes, fears..." She waved an elegant blue hand. "When you first left with Talyn, I almost despaired for him, you know. I feared what you would do to him, with him... But then, when I discovered you hadn't fired first on the Halosians, when you expressed the desire to outfit Talyn with non-lethal weapons, I thought -- I hoped -- that I had misjudged. That you were capable of change."

Crais's throat felt unaccountably tight. "Talyn... was a good ship. I tried to be worthy of him."

"And the person you once were... He was not worthy?"

"No."

Zhaan nodded slowly, a soft, knowing look in her eyes.

"Don't look at me like that."

"How am I looking at you?"

"With pity." He had not taken kindly to others' pity when he was alive, and he saw no reason to start accepting it in death.

She shook her head. "Not pity. Say, rather... empathy, perhaps?"

"Empathy." The word emerged from him with a disbelieving snort.

"We have more in common than you might think. I, too, know what it is like to have a violent nature. To struggle to change." She paused and looked at him silently, her eyes transfixing him. "I know what it is like to hate. I hated _you_ once."

He could no longer look at those eyes, and turned his face away. "I probably deserved it."

"Whether you deserved it or not doesn't matter. Hate does terrible things to the soul that harbors it."

"Hate was so easy." He was almost talking more to himself now than to her. And why not? Perhaps, after all, she was nothing more than a projection of his dying mind, no matter what he believed. "So much easier than guilt. Easier than... acceptance. I knew in my heart that Crichton wasn't to blame for my brother's death. But how could I accept that? Accept that an inferior being in a technologically primitive craft just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, that it had nothing to do with my brother at all? No. It was my fault for sending him out there, or it was Crichton's. And if it was Crichton's... then I could _do_ something about it. I could have vengeance, at least. I couldn't... I couldn't do nothing. I did so much nothing for Tauvo..."

He trailed off, lost in grief as sharp and fresh as it had been the day of his brother's death. She remained respectfully silent until he looked back at her. "I did try to change. Much good that it did me."

"You died well," she said quietly.

"I... did. I think it may have been the only thing I ever _did_ do well." When she said nothing, he found more words to fill the silence. "So did you, I understand."

She shook her head. "I died for good ends, but for bad reasons. I welcomed death because I feared for my soul, feared that if I continued to live, sooner or later I would lose my struggle. That I would once again be the vicious creature I was born to be. I believed an act of self-sacrifice would remove the stain from my soul, make me fit to meet my Goddess." She paused. "I understood so little. No one arrives here clean. And she rejects no one simply because they are soiled."

"I wouldn't be so sure." He found himself surprised by the bitterness in his words. "I have yet to meet this Goddess of yours. If she exists, she appears to have no interest in me."

"But you have met her. She is here, now. Around you, inside you. You simply can't hear her over the voice of your own pain. The Goddess accepts all of us, Bialar Crais. But to truly be one with her, we must accept her as well. And since she is part of us, that means we must accept ourselves." She laid a hand gently on his arm. "Do you understand?"

Decadent alien mysticism, a part of him whispered. And yet, here he was. Dead, yet living, or at least thinking. So much of what he had been taught as a Peacekeeper was wrong. Why not this, too? "I think..." he replied at last, "Yes. Perhaps."

She squeezed his arm, a strange, motherly gesture. "It's very difficult to become the souls we should be. Try as we might, it never is possible while we live. Always, we are limited by our circumstances. But here... Here there are no constraints, no physical demands, no expectations to live up or down to. And no excuses. Only your own heart, and your willingness to forgive and be forgiven." She looked at him with a gentle, searching expression. "Are you ready?"

He was quiet for a long moment. "I promised someone, once, that I would try to find the better part of myself. I would hate to meet him here and be forced to admit I had given up simply because I was dead." He looked into her eyes. "Yes. I'm ready."

She smiled at him, radiant as a star. "Then come with me," she said. "There are some people it's time for you to meet."


End file.
